HOMETOWN HERO: Trooper reunites a girl and her dog

A little girl has her dog back, and she has a Michigan State Police trooper to thank.

Lindsey Hamm, 9, wanted to meet her hero, Trooper Randy Gariglio, and she gave him several big hugs when they were introduced at the MSP Ionia Detachment post Monday.

Gariglio, a 14-year veteran of the MSP, all of it spent in Ionia, saw Snowball, aka “Diva,” a beige and white Pekingese Corgi mix, on Riverside Drive near the post around 10 a.m. Monday.

“A car had just gone by this small dog, and I was worried about it getting hit. She seemed scared and lost,” said Gariglio. “I grew up with dogs, and any time I see one out, I worry.”

The trooper stopped, and Diva ran underneath his patrol car. He and a colleague coaxed the dog out, and put her in the back seat, where she promptly perched herself on a small padded printer so she could see out the window.

“I hated to bring her to the shelter, but I knew that was her best bet,” Gariglio said.

At the shelter, animal control officer Gordie Douglas knew all about the missing dog. He is friends with Lindsey’s dad, Rick, and had already been alerted to Diva’s disappearance.

Lindsay’s mom, Rachelle, explained that when the family returned to their home in Canterbury Estates across from Ionia High School on Tuttle Road around 7 p.m. Sunday, the door was wide open and the family’s two dogs, Diva, who is just over a year old, and a 7-year-old Jack Russell named Milo, were gone.

“The wind blew the door open,” Rachelle said, adding that they immediately started searching and found Milo two doors away. “When they were not together, we were really concerned.”

The Hamms posted about the runaway Diva on Facebook and other sites, and heard from someone that she had spotted the dog at McCord’s on Tuttle and M-66 at 7:30 p.m. The family continued to search until 10 p.m., but then they called it a night. Lindsey said she, her mom and her dad all cried.

“I cried a lot,” Lindsey said. “I went to school, but I couldn’t really concentrate, because I was concerned about my dog.”

Rachelle got a call from the shelter Monday morning that Diva had been found, and brought the dog to school to surprise her daughter.

“I was very surprised,” Lindsey said. “There was a scratch on her eye, and I was freaking out, because I didn’t know she was hurt.”

Diva had a couple of puncture wounds in her neck, and a burst blood vessel in her eye, apparently from being shaken by whatever attacked her. She was treated by the vet, and is expected to recover.

“She went a long ways for a little dog,” said Gariglio.

When asked what she wanted to say to her hero, Lindsey just hugged him again and again. Even Diva seemed happy to see her rescuer, standing on her hind legs to greet him.